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Craig & Jills Round the World Trip
We spent 2 nights in Santiago. We went round most of the sights in a day. It was 30 degrees again so it made hard work. Santiago is a bit of a strange city, you can imagine it would have looked a lot nicer prior to the 1985 earthquake! A mix of crumbling old buildings and new ones. Its fairly modern and ok just not many impressive sights to see. Also everyone seems to smoke which is strange. The best part of santiago is Cerro Sta lucia, a park on a hilltop in the middle of the city. Its full of old fort buildings, a cute little church, lots of winding stairways and a nice view across the city. Plus also some shady places to sit around.
On Wednesday we flew down to Puerto Montt, and headed to the small town of Puerta Varas for 2 nights. On the flight down we passed along the edge of the andes, and even saw a smoking Volcano. Puerta Varas is a nice little town on the edge of Chiles 2nd biggest lake, with gorgeous views across to Osorno Volcano covered in snow. It has a european feel, the countryside is like england. The first inhabitants were from Germany and you can see this in the style of buildings, and the fact they sell Kuchen everywhere. All the houses are made of wood and looked like they are from the alps. By the time we arrived all the tours had departed for the day so we decided to hire a car and go and explore ourselves. We drove up to Osorno Volcano which took us right round the edge of the lake and then up the volcano. Craig got to try out his rally skills as the road was gravel and rock. We then got a ski lift up to the edge of the glacier on top of the volcano. It looked amazing, so white, against the blue sky and black volcanic rock. It was bizarre seeing snow when we were only sat sweating on the beach a few days ago. It also gave us great views across to the mountains of Argentina, and of the huge lake.
Yesterday we drove to the island of Chiloe, which meant we got to go on a ferry, and get to see more seals swimming alomgside. Chiloe was a small island with a couple of small fishing villages, not really much to see other than the houses built on wooden stilts on edge of sea, in the main town of Castro.
Today we flew to the end of the earth, Punta Arenas, dont worry we havent fallen off. This place is rather bleak like you would expect, not much here at all, and cant believe we have got to spend a week down here! To top it all Jill gets to try out her first hostal experience so you can imagine how happy she is!! She turned down the first place we looked at for 8quid a night, which was essentially a bed in a shed with a lightbulb !! Full of geography teachers, boy its GRIMMMMM, we may be back in santiago sooner than expected!
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